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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5972083" data-attributes="member: 42582">I have had amnesia. Yes, really. Nearly 6 years ago I suffered encephalitis. There is a period of around 24 hours that I still can't remember at all, and another week that is pretty hazy - in that period I had (gradually reducing) prospective amnesia (ie I formed no new memories) and also had restrospective amnesia, having lost access to my long term memory for the previous 5 or so years. I only know what happened in the missing 24 hours because my partner was there and has told (and retold) me the story. The rest I remember experiencing, but it's something like a dream or a fog.I can remember the start of it - I was feeling sick and lay down to rest. Apparently, I then told my partner I had just had a dream about XYZ, when in fact XYZ was something I had seen in real life about 10 minutes before. Then our youngest daughter (then about 6 months old) started crying, and I asked what the noise was, and didn't know that the child was mine, how old she was (apparently I guessed "3 years") and whether or not we had other children.So it was very sudden and pretty thorough, as far as the years that were wiped out were concerened.My memory returned over about a week or so (I'm not sure exactly, because one consequence of prospective amnesia is that you don't really notice the passage of time - and my partner only has external indications to go on in judging how quickly I recovered). The best metaphor I can use is to say it was like the pages of a book, or in some cases the images of photos or paintings, gradually coming into resolution - as if in a mist, or dim light. For me, at least, recovering my memories was definitely a phenomenal/perceptual experience, rather than a logical/purely cognitive one.I haven't play a Vancian wizard since undergoing this experience, and I'm not sure if it would help. What I can say is that prospective amnesia is very shocking, because you contantly feel as if you have just woken from a coma - you're looking around you and don't know where you are or how you got there (my "reset period" was apparently about 3 minutes in the time period that I can't remember, and increased to several hours over the next couple of days - by the time I left hospital after a week and a half there was no noticable prospective amnesia).So a Vancian wizard, constantly encompassing these powerful thoughts but then losing access to them, might feel emotionally worn or exhausted. And rememorising the spell might be a bit like recovering the sight or feel of something that you believed was part of you, and felt the absence of. I might expect the wizard to become increasingly distant and distracted as s/he runs out of spells, and has less and less of a sense of who s/he is and what motivations and forces got him/her to the situation s/he is in.All that said, I gather in Vance that memorising a spell is more like the mental subjugation of an alien force - perhaps analogous in some fashion to telepathy or possession - and if that's right then maybe the amnesia analysis is wrongheaded. Maybe casting a spell is a relief, as you are no longer concentrating on trying to keep this unruly thing controlled and under wraps.</blockquote>

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